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Billionaire conservative industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch disclosed this week that their political organization plans to spend $889 million on presidential and congressional campaigns in the 2016 election. That would be almost as much as the amount to be spent by each of the two major party’s presidential nominees.

The revelation illustrates the disastrous consequences wrought by the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, in which a majority of justices equated unfettered campaign spending with free speech.

Spending by organizations that don’t have to disclose their donors — referred to as “dark money” — has doubled since 2010, and the loosening of campaign finance regulations has delivered colossal political power to a tiny fraction of the electorate. In 2014, the 100 largest donors to super political action committees spent as much as the 4.75 million donors who made contributions of $200 or less, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

The Koch brothers are a driving force in Republican Party policies tilted toward the 1 percent. They oppose environmental regulation, employee health and safety oversight and an increase in the minimum wage. They support the kind of government austerity policies that have created troubling economic deflation throughout much of Europe.

In a 2010 Washington Post poll, 80 percent of respondents disapproved of the Citizens United decision. Since then, 16 state legislatures and hundreds of municipalities have endorsed a constitutional amendment overturning the ruling.

Resolutions supporting the amendment have been parked in the state House since 2010 and the Senate since 2012. Both bodies should adopt the measure in the interests of preserving democracy and stemming the spending rampage.

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